Re: [Gnome-print] printing Images using pixbufs ..

[Lauris Kaplinski <lauris helixcode com>]

On 04 Dec 2000 20:39:39 -0600, Chema Celorio wrote:
> After discussing this issue with both Lauris & Federico
> I believe that we should encourage all gnome-print apps
> to use pixbufs for printing images. There are a number of
> advantages for using pixbufs, the main one is that we don't
> have to copy the images while printing. So the way the pixbufs
> are going to be handled are :
> 
> 1. App passes pointer of pixbuf to GnomePrintContext
> 2. Context refs the pixbuf
> [App is responsible for not changing the pixbuf while
> gnome-print has a reference to it]
> 3. The gnome-print driver uses the pixbuf and prints the job
> 4. The pixbuf is unrefed
> 
> For the current images functions, gnome-print will create
> (internally, transparent to the app) a pixbuf when the printing
> of that image is requested and it will be unrefed (destroyed too)
> when the printing is done.
> 
> Any comments ?

Now this is ugly...
Although in 99% of cases user probably wants to give the pixbuf maintainer
rule over to gnome-print, it has to be 100% clear what happens.
The logical solution would be to transfer ownership - i.e. gnome-print
does not ref it, and user should not unref it. But this is probably
inconsistent with other gnome API-s.
What brings up the other issue:
We need clean API rules for determining, who owns things passed around.

Lauris